Skip to main content

March Update

 Hey all,


Time for another update! I hope you've been well and enjoying this transition to Spring! 

It's been a really good semester here at UNT and TWU FOCUS. God has given us a solid community of about 200 people this year, which is a small slice in the grand scheme of things, but its a group of students who are coming and learning about Jesus and building relationship with people through discipleship and community. 

I've been spending a lot of time investing 1-1 in our student leaders and Denton pastoral staff team this year. Each week presents new opportunities to talk through their discipleship, talk through their leadership with students who come to their small group and who they meet 1-1 with. While our ministry does spend a lot of time on the "small side" of ministry, e.g. studying the Bible 1-1 and small groups, it's also important to give our students a large group experience every week that looks something like a church experience for them right on campus. We call these meetings Thursday Night Fellowship, and it gathers all of our UNT and TWU students together. Here's a few pictures from the large group side of our ministry

Our fellowship meetings consist of worship, a sermon, and time vision casting for them to meet with students and be involved in community. Here's a snapshot during worship. 

We had a hangout after our fellowship where students ate oatmeal and listened to live jazz by some our musician students. It was a great time. 

Our worship band preparing for our fellowship meeting

We've been having trouble getting a room on campus this past year, but God provided for us with finally finding a good room, so an answered prayer there!


Prayer requests:

- For our relationship with the campuses we work on. They can sometimes be frustrating and hard to deal with but we want to maintain good working relationships with them despite that. We are committed to be present on campus with the students. 

- For this season of my job and ministry, I need prayer for wisdom and energy. Leading a team of staff people is new and challenging still, along with having a baby. Prayers for this exciting and difficult time are very appreciated. 


My favorite recent photo of Jude. He's 9 months now! Crazy how fast it's going. 

May you have a blessed and flourishing life as you follow God and love people around you. 

Ryan Bristow

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Beat of a Different Drum

Hello all! Another school year has come to a close here, and this one marks the end of working at the Collin Campuses and moving over to work at UNT TWU and NCTC in Denton. More on that to come in the next few months, but first let me update you guys on some of what's been going on here the last couple months. The three pictures above are from an outreach time at our Spring Creek Collin College campus. Our outreach time there has been particularly strong the past few weeks, as the students have really taken that on and have been showing up. This was a day where we were outside talking to students and inviting them to come hang out with us and have conversation. This has been a successful way over and over of getting past people's initial hesitancy to engage in something more serious right off the bat, and has led to a lot of people coming into community where they can start studying the bible and joining a small group led by our student leaders. God has been se...
Post a Comment
Read more
Hey all, I'm thankful you're taking the time to read this. I want to give you guys some more peeks into what we've been doing at Collin, and there's a lot that's been happening this month! First, I want to again thank you guys for all your support and prayers. I can't thank you enough for continuing to be a part of God's work on these campuses. I am truly convinced that God is working in the lives of these college students, and that for many of them, this will reshape their life as they go out and live in our society. We still want to bring people to the realization that Jesus is Lord and make fired up disciples who will go out into the world and spread that good news over and over. So thank you again for being a part of that. March was a great month for a lot of reasons. Early on in March, during Collin's spring break, me and a few of the other guys from our FOCUS ministry at Preston Ridge got to drive down to Big Bend National Park. We camped for ...
1 comment
Read more

Checking In

 Hey all, Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were wonderful, and that you're enjoying the post Christmas stretch. Nicole and the kids and I had a great time visiting San Antonio to see my family, and spending it with family and friends up here in the DFW area.  The ministry has been doing really well. The semester ended with a big frenzy of Christmas party, listening to our apprentices give their sermons for the ned of the semester, and a bunch of meetings and 1-1s before everyone left for the break. I'm excited to be back at work today, we're looking ahead to winter camp, which is only a couple of weeks away.  Prayer requests: - Our staff keeps getting sick! In some ways this is the theme of this time of year for people, but we would love some time with some healed bodies and protection from those pesky viruses that go around so we can continue to do what we need to do.  - Winter Retreat. Jan 17-20th. If you could, set a reminder to pray for that time. We are doin...
Post a Comment
Read more